


An Australian New Year’s Eve

by Lilsi



Category: The Bill
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-19
Updated: 2014-04-19
Packaged: 2018-01-20 01:14:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1491298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilsi/pseuds/Lilsi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This fanfiction was once posted at Craiggilmore.co.uk a fan site no longer active, so to preserve this story and others, I am importing them to AO3. I did not want the loss of such a large amount of amazing and wonderful fanfiction, it would be such a waste to fans of Craig Gilmore and Luke Ashton to not have the opportunity to enjoy these stories as i have. Since the site is no longer active i have been unable to contact the creators but if you happen to be them under a new pen name and want the fiction to be removed please send me a note!</p><p>Story written by - Jen</p>
    </blockquote>





	An Australian New Year’s Eve

**Author's Note:**

> This fanfiction was once posted at Craiggilmore.co.uk a fan site no longer active, so to preserve this story and others, I am importing them to AO3. I did not want the loss of such a large amount of amazing and wonderful fanfiction, it would be such a waste to fans of Craig Gilmore and Luke Ashton to not have the opportunity to enjoy these stories as i have. Since the site is no longer active i have been unable to contact the creators but if you happen to be them under a new pen name and want the fiction to be removed please send me a note!
> 
> Story written by - Jen

Craig drove morosely along the track that led out of their property to the steep rough winding road that led to the connection road that led to the motorway that would take him to the Coast’s Central police station where he worked.  As he turned left at their gate he waved to Luke, following in his own car, and watched in his rear-view mirror as Luke returned the gesture and turned right towards his station in the hills. 

 

Craig was definitely not looking forward to this shift.  It was New Year’s Eve and they, like almost every other policeman on the Coast, were rostered for duty.  They had managed to synchronise their duty tonight because it was the most dreaded shift of the year and few actually _offered_ to work it.  Six pm to 2am on New Year’s Eve!  Drunks, drunks and more drunks.   Brawls, gatecrashers, traffic accidents, often drownings at the multitude of beach parties and wild celebrations in the many luxurious houses in the canal estates.  But at least they would be home by 3am and able to have a private, peaceful New Year ceremony together on their patio as the sky slowly paled, then glowed the colour of a blood-orange as the sun rose out of the distant ocean.

 

Craig’s mood lifted as he remembered the goodies he had stashed away to surprise Luke when they were home together again after their horror shifts.  He’d gone to the shopping mall the previous day and carefully searched for what he wanted.  A bottle of vintage Louis Roederer Champagne was hidden at the back of the wine fridge and a fine bottle of Grange Hermitage, ordered months earlier and that had cost the earth, was concealed in his wardrobe, well above the level of Luke’s inquisitive police-trained eyes.  Beside it nestled a selection of favourites from the Chocolate Shop.  They both loved bitter dark chocolate and Craig had chosen some plain, some with hazelnuts and some with liqueur cherries snuggled in their luscious centres.  Then he went to the nut shop and selected fresh roasted macadamias, cashews, pistachios, almonds, hazelnuts and Brazil nuts.  He had already visited the specialty cheese shop in Luke’s mountain precinct and bought a mouth-watering selection of imported and domestic cheeses. Plump Greek olives, semi-dried tomatoes and pickled caperberries were waiting in the fridge and the local Swiss-born baker had provided crisp-crusted bruschetta, baked that afternoon.

 

As far as Craig was concerned, Luke could have all those goodies because he had also bought himself two litres of the cheese shop’s other specialty – delicious, made-on-the-premises ice cream!  Churned from thick, locally produced Guernsey cream, he’d chosen two of his favourite flavours; rum’n’raisin and Macadamia nuts with ginger!  His mouth watered at the thought of the icy yumminess awaiting him after this shift.  All this and Luke too!  That particular thought brought a reaction from sensory organs not so much to do with taste!  Oh yes, treats galore after this shift!

 

Buoyed by the anticipation of enjoying the special treats later with Luke…and then, slowly and sensuously, enjoying Luke, Craig was smiling he drove towards the beachside suburb where the central police station was located.  The beach reminded him of the first time he ever saw Luke.  It was their mutual love of surfing that had drawn them to the Queensland Coast where they now lived and it was the same interest that had first brought them together, on a southern Sydney beach, sixteen years ago.  Luke had cheekily fronted Craig, who in Luke’s ten-year-old mind was a sophisticated adult at eighteen, and asked if he could surf with him.  Craig had looked down at the skinny sun-browned kid and dimly felt his world shift slightly as Luke’s earnest brown eyes gazed pleadingly up at him.  Then Luke and his mother had gone to live in Cairns for several years but when Luke returned south he prowled the beach every day, searching until he found Craig again.  This time their worlds fused and they had been together ever since.  Sure, there had been occasional ruptures in their relationship but the depth of their mutual love soon reunited them and knitted up the small tears in the smooth fabric of their life. Armed with the glow of these memories and the treats to come later, Craig was ready to face whatever the night may throw at him.  

 

And throw at him they did!  Some threw _up_ at him while others hurled stones, cans and abuse as he battled alongside fellow officers and privately employed security guards to break up parties that had been gatecrashed by gangs of hundreds of young people. 

 

But the first, and worst, callout of Craig’s shift was to a fatal traffic accident.  On the motorway a speeding vehicle weaved amongst the heavy traffic until the driver lost control and swerved into an oncoming lane. The car burst into flames when it hit another vehicle, killing four of its five occupants.  The keening survivor clung to Craig and sobbed out her grief. The heavily pregnant woman had been thrown out on impact. She was the mother of the three dead children and wife of the second dead driver.  The family had been to driving to an evening church service to celebrate the New Year with their congregation.  Craig sat on the verge of the motorway and kept his arms around the hysterical woman, turning her away from the horrific sight, while they waited for ambulances.  Police rescue and fire teams extricated remains of five brittle bodies from what was left of the vehicles after the fierce fuel blaze as the woman ceaselessly wailed out the agony of her losses.

 

Soon after he returned to the station there was a call to a local beach where one zoned-out reveller had decided to swim to New Zealand!  His drug- and alcohol-fuelled mates plunged into the rough surf to try to bring him back and some were missing.  One body had already been brought ashore by more sober partiers and an SES team was battling out in Zodiacs through the big Christmas tides to search the dark ocean for survivors and, almost certainly, more bodies.  

 

Meanwhile police divers were searching a deep-water canal in front of a luxury home where a speedboat at full throttle had crashed into a moored yacht.  There had been at least four young people in the speedboat, none of whom had survived.  While the divers searched for more possible casualties, Craig interviewed some of the stunned people whose celebrations had been brought to such a horrible, premature end and was thankful that none of them had been on the yacht when the speeding boat rammed into it. 

 

A tipsy girl plunged to her death from a 10th floor balcony while leaning out to throw streamers to friends on a balcony below and Craig watched, as the ambos gathered the broken bloodied form into a body bag, and thought sadly of the parents who’d soon be called to identify their daughter.

 

Then they were called to a pub brawl that had raged beyond control.  The publican had already been rushed to hospital with serious head wounds caused by heavy chairs being thrown and several people were taken to local hospitals with broken bones and gaping wounds from flying broken bottles.

 

The last callout of Craig’s shift was to another party that had been gatecrashed and by the time police arrived the scene was very ugly.  When finally most of the offenders had roared off into the night, no doubt to drink more, sniff more, inject more and inevitably cause more mayhem, and the people they had managed to arrest had been booked, Craig drew a weary breath and thankfully headed home two hours after his shift had officially ended.

 

Why do they do it, year after year, Craig wondered as he drove carefully in the early dawn, scanning the roads for any glimpse of erratic driving or speeding vehicles.  All the loss and agony, all the grief and carnage, the innocent and the guilty damaged impartially as the celebrations raged.  _Why do they keep on doing it?_

 

 

Luke had phoned shortly before the scheduled end of Craig’s shift to say that he had been called to a traffic accident about thirty kilometres west of his station and would be late home.  Sounds bad, he explained sadly to Craig, young people!

 

It had been a relatively quiet New Year’s Eve in the small town that was Luke’s domain until the accident report came in; just a few rowdy street gatherings, a couple of noisy parties and a fight at the local pub, which he quickly quelled. 

 

The car involved in the single vehicle accident had been full of teenagers.  The driver was just seventeen years old; new to driving, new to alcohol, just finished school and due to start studying at the Coast University in the New Year.  Over-confident and under-skilled, the boy pushed his new pride and joy to its limits until he lost control and the speeding vehicle left the road, tore through a barbed wire fence and hit a tree in a paddock. 

 

The driver was dead now along with four of his friends.  The sole survivor, a sixteen-year-old girl, had crawled from the wreckage and managed to call her father on her mobile phone before she collapsed.  They were all local farm kids and the word spread quickly throughout the area.  When Luke arrived, alone in the patrol car and ahead of the ambulance and rescue teams, some family members were already at the scene.  The survivor lay in a paddock not far from the mangled machine.  Seeing that a woman who he knew was a nurse was tending her, Luke went to check the vehicle. 

 

“No use, mate.”  One of the fathers told him dully.  “No use!”

 

But, with a heavy heart, he checked anyway and was unable to find a spark of life in any of the mutilated young bodies, then he joined the group of devastated parents and neighbours who had gathered in a shocked silent group beside the badly wounded survivor.  He knelt to check her as the nurse and one of the neighbours administered CPR. 

 

 “Need a break?” he asked gently.  The nurse nodded at him expressionlessly and rose to join her distraught husband who sobbed over the body of their boy.  The man’s deep rasping sobs were the only sound to be heard in the still of the black night.

 

“Who are they?”  Luke quietly asked the neighbour who was doing the chest compressions.  Luke’s heart sank further as he recognised name after name. 

 

The overworked ambulance and rescue teams eventually came and soon after, a police traffic accident investigation team arrived from the Coast.  A doctor who had just come off shift from the small local hospital declared the injured girl, despite the prolonged efforts of Luke and the neighbour, dead at the scene. 

 

When at last Luke was free to return to his patrol car to leave the site he looked back at the horrific scene in the pale dawn light.  Such a waste, he thought miserably, such a horrible waste of bright young lives.  He could barely imagine what impact this tragic loss would have on such a tiny  community!  In some cases lines of  generations of farmers had been severed in one brief instant.

 

 

 

 

As Luke drove up the track towards the welcome sight of home he felt his mind and body start to relax when he saw Craig in the warm early morning sunlight, showered and changed into casual clothes, sitting on the patio. 

 

Craig had washed the smell of blood, vomit and violence of the night shift from his body, but the horror was still in his mind.  He rose and walked towards Luke, who came gratefully into his outstretched arms.

 

Bad night, they told each other, bad night!  They clung together, slowly distancing themselves from the tragedies they had witnessed during their New Year’s Eve shifts, as policemen must. 

 

After a while they separated and Luke went in to shower and change while Craig laid out the treats he’d planned for them to enjoy as the sun came up.  Oh, well, Craig mused, we missed the dawn but we’re home, safe and together again.  He looked out towards the Coast where he could see the early sun gleaming yellow on the distant ocean and thought once again, before he finally closed his mind to the night’s needless violence, of all the pain and sorrow the celebration of this New Year had engendered; of the families whose loved ones were wounded and in pain; of those whose sons and daughters would never come home again. 

 

Thank God we’re not working today, he thought, grateful that they would be off duty when the New Year suicide reports started to trickle in.  Then he saw Luke, shining and fresh, walking to him smiling. 

 

Luke had washed away the last of his shift’s final horror as he stood under the warm water of the shower, and resolved to look to the future.  He was thinking that maybe he could start a young driver education program in his hill town as he walked out onto the patio to join Craig.

 

The elegant display of goodies delighted him, but the comfort of his lover’s arms was still more attractive.  They came together again, repairing themselves with the warmth and strength of their love for each other, preparing for a new day, a New Year.

 

So glad I have you to come home to, they murmured, clasped tight together, so glad I have you!

 

Jen 28/12/04


End file.
